Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Playing Politics with History – the Still Secret JFK
Assassination Records
20 Ye ars after the JFK Act

By William E. Kelly

You may think the November
22, 1963 assassination of President Kennedy is ancient history, but
as we approach the 50th anniversary of the murder of the president, there
are still government administrators who actively oppose the idea of the full
truth being known today.

To high level officials, some government records on the
assassination are still a matter of national security and many thousands of
historical records are so sensitive that they won’t allow you to read them nearly
a half-century after Kennedy was killed.

Polls have consistently shown that the American public’s
confidence in their government has declined steadily since the Warren Report on
the assassination was issued in 1964, and 80% of the people refuse to believe
its conclusion that the President was killed by a lone, deranged gunman. [See
polls http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-post.html
]

Twenty years ago, in response to the continued decline in public
confidence in government and the outcry over the sealed records, which Oliver
Stone’s movie JFK had called attention to, Congress passed the JFK Act of 1992,
and the President signed the act on October 26, 1992. [ http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/09/jfk-act-1992-public-law-no-102-526.html
] The law created the temporary Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), an
independent agency that reviewed and released nearly five million pages of
once-secret JFK assassination records.

In their Final Report [ http://www.fas.org/sgp/advisory/arrb98/index.html
] the ARRB said, “Restoring public confidence in government is a difficult task
under any circumstances. The Review Board took this responsibility seriously,
however, and set out…to create the most complete record possible of the
documentary evidence of the assassination so
that in the end the American people could draw its own conclusions as to what
happened and why on that fateful day in Dallas in November 1963.”

They also reflected - “Agency reviewers will note that the Republic has not collapsed under the
weight of threats to national security because of Review Board actions and,
perhaps, they will also note that openness is itself a good thing and that
careful scrutiny of government actions can strengthen agencies and the process
of government, not weaken it.”

Former Assassinations Records Review Board member Kermit
Hall said at the time that it would take ten years before the JFK Act and the
work of the ARRB could be adequately evaluated. [ http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/kermit-l-hall-on-jfk-assassination.html
] Well now it has been twenty years and we know that records have been
intentionally destroyed, some gone totally missing and others are being
wrongfully withheld, without any enforcement or oversight of the law.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
estimates that one percent of the records still remain classified, which would
mean there are still an estimated 50,000 still-secret records. Not a few, there
are so many they can’t even tell you how many documents are still sealed or how
many pages are being withheld, and they’re not going to count them until they
are required to do so.

Just among the CIA
records alone, there are over 1,000 documents identified by the ARRB that are
currently locked in a sealed vault at the Archives II facility in College
Park, Maryland and are
scheduled to be released to the public in 2017, but are expected to remain
sealed indefinitely at the request of the CIA.
According to some reports, the CIA has
already identified the documents that they intend to ask the President to
postpone beyond 2017.

So the Kennedy assassination isn’t ancient history, at least
to high level government administrators who consider it so relevant, so
significant today that these records, if released to the public, will threaten
the nation’s security and the very foundations of the government. This
continued secrecy flies in the face of the JFK Act, and the current policies of
open government espoused by the administration today.

One of the first things President Obama did once assuming
office was to declare a policy of “open government,” saying that “no record
shall be withheld indefinitely.” He issued an executive order creating the
National Declassification Center (NDC) to expedite
the declassification and release of a backlog of over 4 million pages of
documents by 2013, which according to assistant archivist Michael Kurtz,
included the remaining withheld JKF assassination records.

The NDC reported that the level
of public interest would determine their priorities saying, “To achieve the NDC goal of making declassified records available to the public, three
factors affect how records will be prioritized: 1) High Public Interest – The
NDC will use a variety of sources, including public input through a variety of
social media technologies, and information about records requested in the NARA
research rooms, and by the public through the Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential
Records Act and Mandatory Declassification Review provisions of E.O. 135264, to determine
the level of public interest…”

No other issue came close to the high level of public
interest in the JFK assassination records. Including those records in the NDC
effort would be consistent with the administration’s espoused policy of open
government and would release the records in 2013, the 50th
anniversary of the event.

At the second public hearing however, after assistant
archivist Michael Kurtz had retired, the NARA
announced that he “misspoke” and the remaining sealed JFK assassination records
are not going to be included in the 2013 NDC
declassification project. So instead of giving priority to the records with the
most public interest, they decided to exclude them all together.

It would also be nice to know if Michael Kurtz, the
assistant archivist with over 30 years as an archivist, who said the JFK
records were included in the NDC program,
was fired or forced to retire because of having “misspoke” about the
disposition of the JFK records?

David Ferreiro, the Archivist, in an interview in the Boston Globe, said that NDC forum audience members who participated in the
question and answer period included the UFOers on one side and the
assassination buffs on the other,
but no one at that hearing mentioned
UFOs, and the murder of the President cannot be easily dismissed as
a joke, but is a national security issue of the greatest importance.

The clear and cold refusal by NARA
to seriously consider the declassification and release of the remaining
withheld JFK assassination records led to the posting of a petition at Change.org,
which now has over 2,000 signatures, calling on the Archivist and the
President’s chief information officer to release these records.

At the third open public hearing of the NDC Lesar asked the
CIA representative how long it would take them to declassify the remaining
records once they began to do it and the answer was two months. But at this
point they’re not even interested in counting how many pages there are.

Three of the six questions posed by the public at the third
open NDC hearing concerned the JFK
assassination records, but when the NARA
posted the official videotape of the hearing, the tape freezes just as the
public question and comment session begins, and it appears that the recording
machine was deliberately turned off, which certainly indicates they were not
even interested in preserving what the public had to say. [JFKcountercoup:
View the third NDC Open Public Forum ]

Reporter Dick Russell, in his blog [http://www.dickrussell.org/] wrote, “when
the person in charge of the National Archives' DeclassificationCenter (Sheryl Shenberger) was
formerly employed by the CIA, perhaps we
should expect no less than the current impasse. Before undertaking prior
declassification chores for the Agency, Shenberger was a branch chief in the CIA's
CounterTerrorismCenter between 2001 and 2003.

For those of us who are convinced we've never been told the
truth about the tragedy of November 22, 1963 - a day that changed the course of
American history - it's time to make the government hear our voices
loud-and-clear leading up to next year's 50th anniversary.”

Since the belligerent attitude of the NARA
and NDC administrators must reflect that of
the Archivist himself, Paul Kuntsler decided to write him an open letter, and when
it went unanswered, to get his attention by holding a protest at the National
Archives, which he did on October 8, Columbus Day. Joined by a few other
researchers, they wore “Free the JFK Files” signs and distributed copies of Kuntsler’s
open letter [Kuntsler’s letter: JFKcountercoup:
Open Letter to Ferriero ], giving one to a mid-level NARA
official who came out to meet them. Copies of the letter were sent to news
papers and media outlets, none of which bothered to cover the event or publish
the letter.

One of the historical researchers who did attend the demonstration,
former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley, has been dueling the CIA
in court over release of specific JFK assassination files. Not among the CIA
records at the NARA’s
JFK Collection are the operational files of former CIA
officer George Joannides, whose death has not softened the CIA’s
refusal to release his records or include them in the JFK Act Collection. This
is so even though Joannides’ was the CIA
officer responsible for the anti-Castro Cuban Student Revolutionary Directore (DRE),
an anti-Castro Cuban organization the accused assassin tried to infiltrate a
few months before he allegedly killed the president.

Detailing the relationship between the DRE,
their CIA case officer and the accused
assassin would go a long way in determining whether the assassination was the act
of a lone, deranged nut or was a well planned and executed covert intelligence
operation designed to shield those actually responsible.

Since the Joannides records were “not considered relevant”
to the assassination and not included as part of the JFK Act records, James Lesar,
at the behest of Morley, filed a FOIA suit to get them, a case that the CIA
has dragged through the appeals courts for many years now. While one could
speculate that if the records supported the government’s official lone-gunman,
lone-nut determination regarding the assassination, then they would have no
qualms about releasing them, but instead they contend these records must remain
sealed for reasons of national security.

Among the documents that the CIA
has released because of the court case are even more surprising, as they show
that besides running the (DRE) Cuban group
that had run-ins with the accused assassin, Joannides was given a special CIA
assignment in 1978, to serve as CIA liaison
to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), where he obstructed the
committee’s access to many of the CIA
records they sought on a number of issues related to the assassination.

The former chief counsel to the committee, G. Robert Blakey,
now a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said that if he knew
Joannides had been the case officer responsible for the DRE he would have had
him testify under oath.

Instead, Joannides kept the HSCA from obtaining the relevant
records about the Cubans, the CIA officer
and the accused assassin, and the CIA is
keeping them from being included in the JFK Collection and out of the public
eye today.

It is not only the CIA
who gets its way with NARA, the Secret
Service destroyed records that were requested by the ARRB after the JFK Act was
enacted, the Office of Naval Intelligence can find no relevant assassination
records whatsoever from the files of its director, ever though many such
documents have been found among the records of other agencies, and the White
House Communications Agency (WHCA) refuses to even acknowledge the existence of
the original, unedited Air Force One radio transmission tapes.

According to the law it is the responsibility of the NARA
to enforce the JFK Act, which they have failed to do, and it is the responsibility
of Congress to oversee the law, which they refuse to do, as they have not held
an oversight hearing on the issue in over fifteen years. [JFKCountercoup2:
WHY Congress Oversight Is Needed ]

In order to rectify the situation, and get the government to
enforce the law, we have written, faxed and emailed letters, asked appropriate
questions at public hearings, petitioned the government and protested with pickets
and flyers seeking what most American citizens want – the full release of the
records, yet the agency administrators do not even acknowledge our requests and
the most significant records remain sealed.

The government’s intransigence, their blatant destruction of
records, their refusal to include the JFK records as part of the NDC
program, to enforce the JFK Act or the President’s Executive Order, to hold mandated
Congressional oversight hearings and to release the relevant records is playing
politics with history, our history, our records, and we must hold them
accountable for their actions.

This is the 20th anniversary of the enactment of
the JFK Act, one of the most significant pieces of legislation in history, and
I call on you and everyone interested in the truth about the assassination and
our mutual history, to take action, any action – write a letter to the
Archivist, your congressman or the President, make a phone call, post on a
government web page or internet forum, sign the petition or get some friends to
sign it, but do something that will help make the withheld JFK assassination
records an issue.

At one time some records may have been reasonably withheld
for reasons of national security, but now, fifty years after the assassination and
twenty years after the enactment of the JFK Act, it is a matter of national
security to release them to the public, so “the American people could draw its
own conclusions as to what happened and why on that fateful day in Dallas.”

In 1962, on the twentieth anniversary of the Voice of
America, President Kennedy said, “We seek a free flow of information…We are not
afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas,
alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let
its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is
afraid of its people.”

Today, the American government is afraid of its people,
afraid to enforce its own laws and afraid to allow its citizens know the
complete truth about the assassination of President Kennedy.

Now, nearly fifty years after the assassination and twenty
years after the enactment of the JFK Act, it is time to do something about it.

THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS
COLLECTION ACT OF 1992 (JFK ACT)

Section 1:

Short Title

This Act may be cited as the “President John F. Kennedy
Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992.”

Section 2:

Findings, Declarations, and Purposes

(a)Findings
and Declarations – The Congress finds and declares that –

(1)all
Government records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy
should be preserved for historical and governmental purposes;

(2)all
Government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy
should carry a presumption of immediate disclosure, and all records should be
eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the
history surrounding the assassination;

(3)legislation
is necessary to create an enforceable, independent, and accountable process for
the public disclosure of such records;

(4)legislation
is necessary because congressional records related to the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy would not otherwise be subject to public disclosure
until at least the year 2029.

(5)Legislation
is necessary because the Freedom of Information Act, as implemented by the
executive branch, has prevented the timely public disclosure of records related
to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

(6)Legislation
is necessary because Executive Order No. 12356, entitled “National Security
Information” has eliminated the declassification and downgrading schedules
related to classified information across the government and has prevented the
timely public disclosure of records related to the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy.

(7)Most
of the records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are
almost 30 years old, and only in the rarest cases is there any legitimate need
for continued protection of such records.

(b)Purposes
– The purposes of this Act are – (1) to provide for the creation of the
President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection at the National
Archives and Records Administration, and

(2) to require the expeditious public transmission to the
Archivist and public disclosure of such records.

Section 5:

Review, Identification, Transmission to the National
Archives, and Public Disclosure of Assassination Records by Government Offices

(a)In
General

(1)As
soon as practicable after the date of enactment of this Act, each Government
office shall identify and organize its records relating to the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy and prepare them for transmission to the Archivist
for inclusion in the Collection.

(2)No
assassination record shall be destroyed, altered or mutilated in any way.

(3)No
assassination record made available or disclosed to the public prior to the
date of the enactment of this Act may be withheld, redacted, postponed for public
disclosure, or reclassified.

(4)No
assassination record created by a person or entity outside of government
(excluding names or identities consistent with the requirements of Section 6)
shall be withheld, redacted, postponed for public disclosure, or reclassified…..

Postponements Under The JFK Act

Whenever an agency wishes, in the terms of the JFK Act, to
“postpone” (i.e. redact) information, it must submit those proposed
postponements to the Review Board, which then makes “formal determination” on
the release of the information.

If an agency disagrees with a decision of the Review Board,
its sole recourse under the JFK Act is to appeal the Review Board’s decision to
the President. 1.

Whenever an agency wishes to postpone information from a
record before the record is released to the public, the agency must identify
with specificity the information to be postponed, identify the specific
provision of Section 6 of the JFK Act that permits the postponement, and
provide “clear and convincing” evidence to the Review Board as to why the
information should be postponed. (See Section 6 of the JFK Act, attached.) By
way of example, the FBI, which seeks to postpone information that might
identify informants, provides other evidence that might be useful to the Review
Board when evaluating the proposed postponements. The Review Board takes very
seriously its statutory obligation to sustain proposed postponements “only in
the rarest of cases [where there is a] legitimate need for continued protection
of such records.” See Section 2(a)(7) (emphasis added). Under this statutory
standard, which presumes the release of the information except in the “rarest
of cases,” agencies have tended to postpone very little information and then
only when they are able to provide evidence supporting the proposed
postponements. 2.

Thus
far, only one agency, the FBI, has made an appeal to the President. After
a full briefing of the issues by the FBI and the Review Board, the FBI
withdrew all of its appeals. As a result, every formal determination made
by the Review Board has been followed and every record has been made
available to the public in accordance with the Board’s decisions.

The
Review Board does, however, routinely sustain postponements of Social
Security numbers. No evidence need be provided for such postponements.

ONI Document Declassification Review and Transmission
Procedure

The following steps should be taken by ONI to review records
that it does not desire to release in full in accordance with JFK Act
requirements.

-ONI should make a photocopy of the original record,
conduct declassification review in accordance with Section 6 of the JFK Act,
and mark the proposed postponements either by highlighting them, or by clearly
bracketing them.

-ONI must create a Record Identification Form (RIF) for
each document it reviews, using the DOS software and numbering disks created by
NASA and previously provided by the ARRB.

-ONI should forward to the Review Board (with Rifs
attached), upon completion of its declassification review, all such
photocopies, with postponements identified by brackets or highlighting, reason
codes (from Section 6 of the JFK Act) assigned to each postponement in the
margin that identify which section of the JFK Act justifies postponement, and
with all supporting evidence for each postponement. [Along with the highlighted
or bracketed review copy of each document, either the original, or a pristine
(i.e., unredacted) photocopy, must also be transmitted to the Review Board,
with a separate copy of that document’s unique RIF
attached.]

Once the Review Board staff reviews ONI’s proposed
postponements, the staff will notify the Review Board as to whether it concurs
with your postponements or not. The Review Board will then evaluate ONI’s
proposed postponements, in light of the ARRB staff recommendations, and the
evidence provided by ONI (and any referral agencies) in support of these
desired postponements.

The Review Board will make formal determinations regarding
postponements recommended by ONI. ONI will then be promptly notified of the
Board’s decisions, and the Board will explain subsequent procedures. If there
are no postponements in a document RIFed by ONI, or if ONI recommends
postponements that are not upheld by the Board (and ONI chooses not to appeal
to the President), those documents will be immediately transmitted to the JFK
Collection at the Archives by the ARRB, and released to the public. Whenever
records contain postponements following formal determinations by the Review
Board, both the unredacted version (original or pristine photocopy) and the
redacted version is released to the public via the JFK Collection.

Section 6:

Grounds for Postponement of Public Disclosure of Records

Disclosure of assassination records or particular
information in assassination records to the public may be postponed subject to
the limitations of this Act if there is clear and convincing evidence that –

(1)the
threat to the military defense, intelligence operations, or conduct of foreign
relations of the United States
posed by the public disclosure of the assassination is of such gravity that it
outweighs the public interest, and such public disclosure would reveal –

(B) an intelligence source or
method which is currently utilized, or reasonably expected to be utilized , by
the United States Government and which has not been officially disclosed, the
disclosure of which would interfere with the conduct of intelligence
activities; or

(C) any other matter currently
relating to the military defense, intelligence operations or conduct of foreign
relations of the United States,
the disclosure of which would demonstrably impair the national security of the United
States;

(2)the
public disclosure of the assassination record would reveal the name or identity
of a living person who provided confidential information to the United
States and would pose a substantial risk of
harm to that person;

(3)the
public disclosure of the assassination record could reasonably be expected to
constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, and that invasion of
privacy is so substantial that it outweighs the public interest;

(4)the
public disclosure of the assassination record would compromise the existence of
an understanding of confidentiality currently requiring protection between a
Government agent and a cooperating individual or foreign government, and public
disclosure would be so harmful that it outweighs the public interest; or

(5)the
public disclosure of the assassination record would reveal a security or
protective procedure currently utilized, or reasonably expected to be utilized,
by the Secret Service or another Government agency responsible for protecting
Government officials, and public disclosure would be so harmful that it
outweighs the public interest.

Section 12:

Termination of Effect of Act

(a)Provisions
Pertaining to the Review Board – The provisions of this Act that pertain to the
appointment and operation of the Review Board shall cease to be effective when
the Review Board and the terms of its members have terminated pursuant to
section 7(o).

(b)Other
Provisions – The remaining provisions of this Act shall continue in effect
until such time as the Archivist certifies to the President and Congress that
all assassination records have been made available to the public in accordance
with this Act.

The Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board
provides not only an opportunity to detail the extraordinary breadth and depth
of the Board’s work to identify and release the records of the tragic death of
President John F. Kennedy, but also to reflect on the Board’s shared experience
in carrying out this mission and the meaning of its efforts for the much larger
challenge of secrecy and accountability in the federal government. It is true
that the Board’s role was to a large extent disciplined and tightly focused on
the assassination, its aftermath and the broader Cold War context in which the
events occurred.

Any evaluation, however, of the unique experience of the
Review Board-five private citizens granted unprecedented powers to require
public release of long-secret federal records – inevitably presents the larger
question of how the Board’s work can be applied to federal records policy.
There is no doubt that for decades the pendulum had swung sharply toward
secrecy and away from openness. Changes wrought by the end of the Cold War and
the public’s desire to know have begun to shift the balance. The Review Board’s
mandate represented a new frontier in this changing balance – an entirely new
declassification process applied to the most sought after government secrets.

In this chapter, the Board steps back and reflects on its
experiences, raises issues that will help frame the declassification debate,
and makes recommendations on the lessons to be learned from the path taken to
release of the JFK assassination collection. The dialogue about how best to
balance national security and privacy with openness and accountability will
continue both within government and beyond. The Review Board will necessarily
be part of that important debate.

The Review Board was created out of the broad public
frustration that the federal government was hiding important information about
the Kennedy assassination by placing its records beyond the reach of its
citizens.

Broad disagreement with the Warren Commission findings, explosive claims in the
popular movie JFK, and continued deterioration of public confidence in
government led to consensus that it was time to open the files.

Thus the debate in Congress largely became a debate over
what mechanisms could constitutionally compel the opening of the assassination
files.

The Review Board’s mandate was not to investigate one again
the assassination, but to release as many of these heavily restricted documents
as possible. Lawmakers commented that the efforts of the Review Board “will
stand as a symbol and barometer of public confidence in the review and release
of the government records related to the assassination of President
Kennedy….Several provisions of [the JFK Act] are intended to provide as much
independence and accountability as possible within out Constitutional
framework.”

Restoring public confidence in government is a difficult
task under any circumstances. The Review Board took this responsibility
seriously, however, and set out in April 1994 to create the most complete
record possible of the documentary evidence of the assassination so that in the
end the American people could draw its own conclusions as to what happened and
why on that fateful day in Dallas in November 1963.

From the start, the Review Board did as much of its work in
public as it could possibly do, given the classified material with which it
worked. The Board’s major policy decisions were all made carefully consulting
with the public through public hearings and Federal Register notices. Many of
the Board’s requests to agencies for additional information were suggested by
the Board’s continuing dialogue with researchers, authors, and experts.
Frequent public hearings outside of Washington,
experts conferences, ongoing public releases of the records, witness
interviews, and media availability were among the many tools the Board used to
reach out and communicate with a public strongly interested in the results of
the Board’s work.

The result was that the Board was helped immeasurably not
only by the advice and suggestions that resulted from the public dialogue, but
by the records that were discovered and opened through the communications….

The precedents that developed from the Board’s early
deliberations guided the staff in its review of the records and guided agency
reviewers in the positions they took towards postponement requests. The
development of this unique and valuable set of decisions, which came to be
known as the Board’s “common law,” eventually resulted in thousands of
“consensus releases,” in which documents moved directly from the agencies
without redactions to NARA.

There were, of course, many substantive disagreements
between the Board and the agencies, but the course of the relationships were
characterized chiefly by growing mutual understanding and markedly improved
communications. The Board was gratified to see agency reviewers and
decisionmakers grow increasingly aware that he responsible release of information
can provide an opportunity to create a more complete record of the extensive
work that many agencies did on the issues raised by the assassination. Many
appeared also to gain a greater appreciation of the tremendous costs of
secrecy, both in terms of public confidence and maintenance of records.

There were critics of the Review Board, those who believed
that the “targeted declassification” of assassination records not only
interfered with the goal of systematic declassification directed by Executive
Order 12958, but was also much too expensive. It is difficult, of course, to
compare one method of declassification with another, harder still to place a
price tag on the nature of the information that is now released and available
to the American public.

It is worth noting that the Kennedy assassination records
were largely segregated due to the use of the records during the many prior
government investigations of the assassination. But, the Review Board does
recognize that any meaningful approach to declassification will of necessity be
multi-faceted, with different methods adopted for different circumstances. The
particular circumstances of eh assassination of President Kennedy and the
highly secretive government response
have had an enormous impact on public confidence and made the Review
Board approach singularly appropriate, particularly when compared with the
significant costs, both financial and otherwise, of keeping the record secret.
The Board is confident that, in this setting, the approach chosen by the
Congress to open the Kennedy assassination records was a highly effective one.

The Review Board is certainly aware that there are a great
many unresolved issues relating to the assassination of President Kennedy that
will be addressed in the years to come. The massive public collection of
documents that awaits the researchers will undoubtedly shed light not only on
the assassination, but on its broader context as an episode of the Cold War.

The community of professional historians, who initially
exhibited comparatively slight interest in the Board’s work, has begun paying
attention with the new accessibility of records that reflect the Cold War
context in which the assassination is enmeshed. Ultimately, it will be years
before the JFK Collection at NARA
can be judged properly. The test will be in the scholarship that is generated
by historians and other researchers who study the extensive documentation of
the event and its aftermath. Does the historical record formed by the Board
inspire confidence that the record is now reasonably complete?

Will the documents released under the JFK Act lead to still
other materials?

Will the mass of documentary evidence answer the questions
posed by historians and others?

Will the Board’s compliance program inspire confidence that
the agencies have produced all the relevant documentation that exists today in
agency files?

What do the records tell us about the 1960s and the Cold War
context of the assassination?

The Review Board approach, the precedent created, the tools
identified, and the lessons learned will assist future researchers
immeasurably.

Agency reviewers will note that the Republic has not
collapsed under the weight of threats to national security because of Review
Board actions and, perhaps, they will also note that openness is itself a good
thing and that careful scrutiny of government actions can strengthen agencies
and the process of government, not weaken it.

There will likely be problems in the future that best lend
themselves to the extraordinary attention that a similarly empowered Review
Board can focus.

Formation of a historical record that can augment
understanding of important events is central not only to openness and
accountability, but to democracy itself.

At an early stage in the Review Board’s efforts, one of the
Board members commented that the Board should strive to accomplish as much as
it could, to be remembered for what it attempted. Or, to paraphrase Robert
Kennedy, the Board should work hard to ensure that its reach continually
exceeded its grasp. The Board did not always achieve that standard, but the
sheer scope and accessibility of the JFK Collection speaks eloquently about the
effort. The Board has left to posterity a historical bequest that is invaluable
and unprecedented.

Recommendations

The Review Board presents recommendations that reflect the
Board’s experience and provides guidance for those who wish to capitalize on
that experience to further reform the process of classification and
declassification of government documents. The Board recognizes that the JFK Act
represents but one approach to declassification, one whose activity was
designed to review sensitive records concerning a controversial event.

The
Review Board recommends that future declassification boards be genuinely
independent, both in the structure of the organization and in the
qualifications of the appointments.

The
Review Board recommends that any serious, sustained effort to declassify
records requires congressional legislation with (a) a presumption of
openness, (b) clear standards of access, (c) an enforceable review and
appeals process, and (d) a budget appropriate to the scope of the
task.

The
Review Board recommends that its “common law” of decision, formed in the
context of a “presumption of disclosure” and the “clear and convincing
evidence of harm” criteria, be utilized for similar information in future
declassification efforts as a way to simplify and speed up releases.

The
Review Board recommends that future declassification efforts avoid the
major shortcomings of the JFK Act:

(a) unreasonable time limits,

(b) employee restrictions,

(c) application of the law after
the Board terminates, and

(d) problems inherent with rapid
sunset provisions.

The Review
Board recommends that the cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive
problem of referrals for “third party equities” (classified information of
one agency appearing in a document of another) be streamlined by

requiring representatives of all
agencies with interests in selected groups of records to meet for joint
declassification sessions, or

The
Review Board recommends that a compliance program be used in future declassification
efforts as an effective means of eliciting full cooperation in the search
for records.

The
Review Board recommends the following to ensure that NARA
can exercise the provisions of the JFK Act after the Review Board
terminates: a. that NARA has
the authority and means to continue to implement Board decisions, b. that
an appeals procedure be developed that places the burden for preventing
access on the agencies, and c. that a joint oversight group composed of
representatives of the four organizations that originally nominated
individuals to serve on the Review Board be created to facilitate the
continuing execution of the access provisions of the JFK Act.

The
Review Board recommends that the Review Board model be adopted and applied
whenever there are extraordinary circumstances in which continuing
controversy concerning government actions has been most acute and where an
aggressive effort to release all “reasonably related” federal records
would serve usefully to enhance historically understanding of the event.

The
Review Board recommends that both the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
and Executive Order 12958 be strengthened, the former to narrow the
categories of information automatically excluded from disclosure, the
latter to add “independent oversight” to the process of “review” when agency heads decide that
records in their unites should be excluded from release.

The
Review Board recommends the adoption of a federal classification policy
that substantially:

a. limits the
number of those in government who can actually classify federal documents,

b. restricts the number of
categories by which documents might be classified, c. reduces the time period
for which the document(s) might be classified,

d. encourages the sue of
substitute language to immediately open material which might otherwise be
classified, and e. increases the resources available to the agencies and NARA
for declassifying federal records.

The Review Board’s experience leaves little doubt that the
federal government needlessly and wastefully classified and then withheld from
the public access countless important records that did not require such
treatment. Consequently there is little doubt that an aggressive policy is
necessary to address the significant problems of lack of accountability and an
uniformed citizenry that are created by the current practice of excessive
classification and obstacles to releasing such information. The need is not
something recently identified, although the Moynihan Commission on Secrecy in
Government is a recent expression of this longstanding concern. Change is long
overdue and the Review Board’s experience amply demonstrates the value of
sharing important information with the American public. It is a matter of
trust.

The Review Board’s recommendations are designed to help
ensure that the comprehensive documentary record of the Kennedy assassination
is both actively developed after the board terminates, and that the experience
of the Review Board be turned to the larger purpose of addressing the negative
consequences of the excessive classification of federal records.

The Review Board’s efforts to accomplish the purposes of the JFK Act has been
focused and aggressive. It will be for others, of course, to judged the Board’s
success in achieving these goals, but there can be no doubt about the
commitment to making the JFK Act and an independent Review Board a model for
the future.

October is American Archives Month, a time when we celebrate
the work that archivists all over the country do to ensure that the records of
their institutions are created, collected, and protected in a manner that
allows their clientele to find what they need. Here at the National
Archives that means ensuring that citizens can hold our government accountable,
can learn from our history, and can explore family histories, to name just a
few ways the records are used.

We risk losing our memory as a country if we cannot meet the challenges of electronic records management. The fact is, without good records management, it is impossible for us to learn from the past and plan for the future....I expect the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration to change the way we do things, the way we think about things, and the way we deliver services to the public.

What do I love about the National Archives? The
discoveries made every day in the records of our country, such as:

Last week a veteran arrived in College
Park by motorcycle from Nevada.
He has been searching for 43 years for information about his platoon leader
killed in Viet Nam.
The staff found the information he needed “in 30 seconds!”

An archivist in St. Louis
learned of a family bible in our pension claim records for his Revolutionary
War ancestor

Letters with checks for the pennies collected by school
children, teachers, and Elks Lodges around the country in a campaign to save
the Navy’s oldest ship, the U.S.S. Constitution during the late 1920s.

The fact that my grandfather, Paolo Ferriero, was 15 years
old when he arrived in Boston from Naples in 1903. And that he was met by
his father, Antonio, who had arrived three years before.

One of the supplementary questions NOT asked during the 1940
Census: “Do you have a waffle iron and a Bible?”

What I love most about the National Archives is the staff in
44 facilities across the country who are so passionate about their work—those
who work with veterans, the general public, genealogists, scholars and
students, the Federal Agencies, the White House, and Congress. And, just
as passionate, are those who support those who are doing that frontline work.
For me, every month is Archives Month!

David S. Ferriero was confirmed as 10th Archivist of the United
States on November 6, 2009.

Previously, Mr. Ferriero served as the Andrew W. Mellon
Director of the New York Public Libraries (NYPL). He was part of the leadership
team responsible for integrating the four research libraries and 87 branch
libraries into one seamless service for users, creating the largest public
library system in the United States
and one of the largest research libraries in the world. Mr. Ferriero was in
charge of collection strategy; conservation; digital experience; reference and
research services; and education, programming, and exhibitions.

Among his responsibilities at the NYPL was the development
of the library’s digital strategy, which currently encompasses partnerships with
Google and Microsoft, a web site that reaches more than 25 million unique users
annually, and a digital library of more than 750,000 images that may be
accessed free of charge by any user around the world.

Before joining the NYPL in 2004, Mr. Ferriero served in top
positions at two of the nation’s major academic libraries, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA,
and DukeUniversity
in Durham, NC.
In those positions, he led major initiatives including the expansion of
facilities, the adoption of digital technologies, and a reengineering of
printing and publications.

Mr. Ferriero earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in
English literature from NortheasternUniversity
in Boston and a master’s degree
from the Simmons College of Library and Information Science, also in Boston.
After serving in the Navy during the Vietnam War, he started in the humanities
library at MIT, where he worked for 31 years, rising to associate director for
public services and acting co-director of libraries.

In 1996, Mr. Ferriero moved to DukeUniversity, where he served as
University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs until 2004. At Duke,
he raised more than $50 million to expand and renovate the university’s library
and was responsible for instructional technology initiatives, including
overseeing Duke’s Center for Instructional Technology.

We have provided links to other websites because they have
information that may interest you. Links are not an endorsement by the National
Archives of the opinions, products, or services presented on these sites, or
any sites linked to it. The National Archives is not responsible for the
legality or accuracy of information on these sites, or for any costs incurred
while using these sites.

As American historical researchers, we are out here this
morning to protest the decision of the National Archives not to declassify
documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy, a decision made at
the request of the Central Intelligence Agency.

On Wednesday, January 21, 2009, the day following his
inauguration, President Obama declared that “no information may remain
classified indefinitely” as part of a sweeping overhaul of the executive
branch’s system for protecting classifying national security information.

On Tuesday, June
26, 2012, I wrote to you requesting an explanation why the National
Archives decided to violate President Obama’s executive order. As you know,
your office failed to respond to my letter. Other members of the research
community also wrote to you about the JFK assassination records, including Jim
Lesar, president of the Assassination Archives and ResearchCenter.

As I did last June 26, I am attaching a copy of the New York
Times story, “Obama Moves to Curb Secrecy with Order on Classified Documents”
from Wednesday, December 30, 2009.
In particular, President Obama “established a new NationalDeclassificationCenter
at the National Archives to speed the process of declassifying historical
documents by centralizing their review, rather than sending them to different
agencies.” President Obama set a four-year deadline for processing a
400-million-page backlog of such records that originally included the JFK
assassination records to be released during 2013, the 50th
anniversary of Kennedy’s death, but later the National Archives reneged on that
commitment.

As the Archivist of the United
States, you are responsible for the
preservation of our country’s records and the documentation of our nation’s
history. Conducting an open and honest government is the goal of President
Obama’s administration. Our founding fathers recognized that a democracy
required an informed electorate, one that has all the information and facts
necessary to make decisions that effect the direction that the country will
take in the future.

Over the course of American history, no single event has had
such an impact on our national political system than the assassination of
President Kennedy, largely because of the unresolved nature of the case both in
legal and moral terms, particularly with the continued withholding of relevant
records from the public.

Polls have consistently shown that the American public’s
confidence in their government began to decline shortly after the release of
the Warren Report in 1964 and has continued to decline ever since. That
confidence will never recover until all the government records on the JFK
assassination are released to the public.

When the Warren Commission concluded its work, Chief Justice
Earl Warren, in response to a question as to when all of its records would be
released, responded by saying, “Not in your lifetime!”

Then when the House Select Committee on Assassinations
(HSCA) disbanded, its records were sealed for a half-century. The second chief
counsel to the HSCA said that he could live with the judgment of historians in
fifty years.

But in response to Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK, Congress passed
the John F. Kennedy Records Act of 1992. This act created the Assassinations
Records Review Board (ARRB), which despite releasing over four million pages of
records, failed to locate the complete Air Force One radio transmission tapes
of November 22, 1963, the
relevant documents of Office of Naval Intelligence Director Admiral Rufus
Taylor, and numerous other records related to the JFK assassination.

Since agencies, especially the CIA, FBI and the Secret
Service, knew that the ARRB was a temporary agency, they delayed responding to
requests for records, and intentionally kept records from being reviewed and
becoming part of the JFK assassination records collection.

Even among those records that were to be included, the CIA
has withheld over a thousand documents. Many of these documents are now part of
a major Freedom of Information Act court case which should be resolved in the
public’s interest.

Some agencies, such as the Department of Defense and the
Secret Service, intentionally destroyed relevant records to keep them from
becoming released to the public. Those individuals responsible for the
destruction of these documents have never been questioned or reprimanded for
their actions.

Thus Mr. Ferriero, why have you not, as the Archivist of the
United States,
requested that Congress to hold mandated oversight hearings on the JFK Records
Act and schedule a special program at the National Archives for the upcoming 50th
anniversary of President Kennedy’s murder?

These records were created by public servants working for
the federal government. They do not belong to those who created them, or the
agencies they work for, or the Kennedy family. They belong to the people of the
United States.
These records are a record of our history. We want them now – not in 2017 or
2029.

Fifty years ago there might have been some reason to keep
some of these records secret, but now, it is a matter of our national security
that the JFK assassination records be released to the public.

The provisions of the John F. Kennedy Records Act require
the full disclosure of all unredacted copies of all related records
immediately, when the reason for postponing release in each case is no longer
relevant, and no later than 2013, the 50th anniversary of President
Kennedy’s assassination.

We want the National Archives to assume the role previously
performed by the ARRB, as the law requires, continuing to fulfill the remaining
work until it is done.

Since a copy of the Air Force One radio tapes was discovered
in November 2011, the allegedly destroyed Secret Service documents were found
among the effects of a former agent, and the records of the first chief counsel
of the HSCA were not obtained by the ARRB, we want the National Archives to
resume the search for all relevant JFK assassination records, including
federal, state, local, foreign and personal files, secure them and make them
part of the JFK Assassination Records Collection, open to the public.

Finally Mr. Ferriero,
as the Archivist of the United States, do your sworn duty and fulfill
the requirements of the JFK Records Act so that you can, as the law requires,
report to Congress that the last JFK assassination record has been released to
the public.

Sincerely

SIGNED

Paul Kuntzler

THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONAL WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2009

Obama Moves to Curb Secrecy With Order on Classified
Documents

By Charles Savage

WASHINGTON –
President Obama declared on Tuesday that “no information may remain classified
indefinitely” as part of a sweeping overhaul of the executive branch’s system
for protecting classified national security information.

In an executive order and an accompanying residential
memorandum to agency heads, Mr. Obama signaled that the government should try
harder to make information public if possible, including by requiring agencies
to regularly review what kinds of information they classify and to eliminate
any obsolete secrecy requirements.

“Agency heads shall complete on a periodic basis a
comprehensive review of the agency’s classification guidance, particularly
classification guides, to ensure the guidance reflects current circumstances
and to identify classified information that no longer requires protection and
can be declassified,” Mr. Obama wrote in the order, released while he was
vacationing in Hawaii.

He also established a new NationalDeclassificationCenter
at the National Archives to speed the process of declassifying historical
documents by centralizing their review, rather than sending them in sequence to
different agencies. He set a four-year deadline for processing a
400-million-page backlog of such records that includes archives related to
military operations during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Moreover, Mr. Obama eliminated a rule put in place by former
President George W. Bush in 2003 that allowed the leader of the intelligence
community to veto decisions by an interagency panel to declassify information.
Instead, spy agencies who object to such a decision will have to appeal to the
president.

As a presidential candidates, Mr. Obama campaigned on a
theme of making the government less secretive. But in office his record has
been more ambiguous, drawing fire from advocates of open government by
embracing Bush-era claims that certain lawsuits involving surveillance and
torture must be shut down to protect state secrets.

Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government
Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, expressed cautious optimism
about Mr. Obama’s new order, saying it appeared to be “a major step forward”
from the vantage point of those who believe the government is too secretive.

“Everything depends on the faithful implementation by the
agencies,” Mr. Aftergood said, “but there are some real innovations here.”

Mr. Obama also suggested that his administration might
undertake further changes, saying he looked forward to recommendations from a
study that Gen. James L. Jones, the national security advisor, is leading “to
design a more fundamental transformation of the security classification
system.”

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Paul Kuntsler, who called for the Monday, October 8th Columbus
Day picket and protest at the National Archives (and Records Administration NARA),
formerly owned the transcript service that handled much of the HSCA testimony.
He is a long time activist who has previously taken full page ads out in the
New York Times and Washington Post questioning their reporting on the
assassination of President Kennedy. He has also sponsored a forum on the
assassination at the WillardHotel
and has previously held protests at the CIA,
FBI and Secret Service.

Security at the NARA
have requested that no pickets on polls be used, but signs held by string
around the neck are okay. We have also agreed not to disturb those people in
line to get into the Archives.

Kuntsler believes, and others agree, that our purpose is not
to harass NARA employees or the
public, as most people, including many within the government agencies and
departments, support our cause, and want to see all of the remaining
assassination records released. Our purpose is to convince them that we are
right and they too should support the release of these records.

Only a few high level administrators and agency heads want
to keep these records withheld, not for reasons of national security or because
they prove conspiracy, but because they are an embarrassment to their agencies
and departments, and because they can keep them secret.

The Columbus Day protest at the NARA
was instigated by the insolence of the NARA
officials to cower and kowtow to the CIA and
agree to exclude the remaining sealed JFK assassination records from the 2013 NationalDeclassificationCenter
review. The president did not say that no government record would remain sealed
forever “except the JFK assassination recorded,” and his executive order does
not specifically exclude these records.

At the first open public hearing of the NDC two years ago,
the assistant archivist said the JFK assassination records would be included,
but that commitment was rescinded at the second public hearing, when they said
the assistant archivist had “misspoke.” That assistant archivist would retire
after over 20 years in government service. Was he fired or forced to retire
because of this issue?

Although the video of that first NDC public meeting is
posted at their web site, neither the tape or a transcript of the second or
third public meeting can be reviewed, and when I requested a video recording
and transcript of the third meeting I was told there is no transcript. While
upon request, I was supplied with a link to a Youtube videotape of the third
meeting, but that tape is posted under a private section of Youtube that other
people can’t reach by a Google search, and it freezes near the very end,
shortly before the public questions are asked, including answers to what we
consider most significant.

While a NARA
staff member has said that I would be provided with a corrected version, if I
am not, then there is nothing else to conclude except that the glitch is
intentional and there is information in that part of the tape that someone with
significant power within NARA does
not want publicly released.

This must be so because the auditorium where the public
forum was held is set up for professional audio visual recording of all
presentations, with cameras stationed behind glass and audio recording stations
throughout the room. It is inconceivable that such an accidental technical
glitch would occur at precisely the right place where the public question
aspects of the proceedings are suddenly froze and inaccessible.

For the record, three of the six post-forum public questions were related to the JFK assassination records. Jeff Morley, Jim Lesar and John Judge all asked pertinent questions or made relevant statements.

Because the open public hearing was held on a weekday in the
last week of August, shortly before the Labor Day holiday, it was clear that
the NARA officials did not want a
large public turnout.

Reported before -

“The National Declassification Center (NDC)
at the National Archives held a public forum on Aug. 29 to obtain public input
on declassification. The NDC is trying
to address a 400 million page backlog of classified records at the Archives.
During the public question period, journalist Jeff Morley (formerly with
the Washington Post) asked that NDC
reconsider its decision earlier this year not to speed up processing
of 1,171 classified CIA records related
to the JFK assassination by the 50th anniversary in 2013 (otherwise they remain
secret until at least 2017 and perhaps indefinitely beyond). The NDC/Archives
response to Morley's request was a flat no. The CIA
representative on the panel said, "My agency has nothing to say on that topic".
Another questioner, Jim Lesar, elicited the admission that it would take
approximately two months to process that quantity of complex
documents. There were six public questions asked at the forum and three
of them were from people seeking declassification of the JFK assassination
records, the most commented topic. The flat negative response to the
JFK records issue cast a pall over the proceedings. There were 100
plus people in attendance, many of them government employees.”

The CIA representative who spoke said that much of the
declassification concerns the identity of CIA agents, whose identities they will not
reveal. If I was there I would have asked him if that included Lee Harvey
Oswald?

Jim Lesar asked the CIA man how long it would take the CIA
to review and declassify the remaining withheld CIA records if they were required
to do so, and the answer was – two months. They don’t even know how many pages there are, and they’re
not about to count them if they don’t have to. They contend they do not have to
act on them until 2017, and claim they don’t have the ability to declassify
them at this time, even though they did accelerate the declassification of all
the CIA records ordered released by 2010 in 2006, four years in advance. We are
now requesting they do the same thing for the 2017 records and declassify them
in 2013, certainly a reasonable request.

The insolence of the NARA
officials to abide by the CIA instructions and ignore the law and intense
public interest in these records has forced us to protest their actions, try to
get the attention of the media and general public and convince them it is
everyone’s best interest to declassify and release these records now.

If you can’t be there in person and participate in the
protest, but would like to support this cause, you can write your own letter, sign
our petition, get others to sign it

and contribute to the Committee for an Open
Archives (COA) Facebook paypal account that
will be used for a full page ad in a Washington DC publication posting our
petition and letters to the Archivist and Congress.

Historical researchers will picket the National Archives on
Constitution Avenue between Seventh and Ninth Streets, N.W. near the Visitor’s
Entrance on Monday, October 8, 2012 between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 Noon and
distribute an open letter to David S. Ferriero, the Archivist of the United
States.

The purpose of the picket will be to protest the decision
by the National Archives not to declassify documents related to the assassination
of President John Kennedy, a decision made at the request of the Central
Intelligence Agency.

The National Archives' decision is in violation of
President Barack Obama' executive order of Tuesday, December 29, 2009 that
"no information may remain classified indefinitely" as part of sweeping overhaul of the executive branch's
system protecting
classified national security information.

President Obama also established a new NationalDeclassificationCenter
at the National Archives to speed the process of declassifying historical
documents by centralizing their review. The President set a four year deadline
for processing a 400-million-page backlog of such records that originally
included the JFK assassination records to be released on the 50th
anniversary of Kennedy’s death, but later reneged on that commitment.

The October 8th picket is in protest that
decision by the Archives and the continued withholding of JFK assassination
records past the 50th anniversary of the assassination.

50 YEARS IS LONG
ENOUGH! – FREE THE JFK ASSASSINATION
RECORDS – IN OUR LIFTIME